White bread with a crust of olive oil and herbs. For me, over the years, making yeast bread has been an exercise in learning how to fail, but the elemental comfort of baking bread is too alluring to give up, so I tried again with the simplest recipe I could find, adding the herb crust only so I wouldn’t get bored. The recipe called for potato flour, which I didn’t have, and butter (though it didn’t specify whether the butter should be melted, so I just softened it to room temperature and incorporated it into the kneading). I used a stand mixer to prepare the dough, since I’ve found that a food processor is too much of a blunt instrument and I don’t have the muscle commitment to knead by hand. After the first rise you break the dough into halves and stretch out a first layer in the pan, then coat with olive oil mixed with parsley and thyme. Put the second layer on top and coat it again, which will give it a dark brown crust. The two layers didn’t come together perfectly for me, and when I try to cook things in delicate shapes there’s always the element of a young elementary school student drawing stick figures and requesting praise, but the finished loaf gave me little to complain about. The herb crust was more for decoration than flavor.
(Photo: Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.)
365 Days of Food 